1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to antibiotics. In particular it relates to compounds that inhibit the causative organism of tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, to pharmaceutical formulations comprising the compounds and to a method for the treatment of tuberculosis. The compounds provided are related to the siderophoric mycobactins which are key in the transport of iron into mycobacterium and the growth thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
The family of mycobactin compounds was first isolated by Snow; Snow, G. A. Bacteriol. Rev. 1970, 34, 99. Structural work with the mycobactin factors was reported by Hu, Jingdan, Miller, Marvin J. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1997, 119, 3462-3468 and Xu, Yanping, Miller, Marvin J. J. Org. Chem. 1998, 63, 4314-4322.
The latter publication describes analogs of mycobactins obtained via retrograde synthesis and the antimycobacterium activity obtained with the analogs.